A proposal for a new emotion

Inspired by yet another one of these pop culture posts about words that describe feelings that we can’t put into words, I have a proposal for a new emotion/word: The feeling of changing your social media profile picture. I’m completely off of social media but today I was spiffying up my other site when I changed one of the main pictures on there and was struck with that old familiar feeling that I used to have when updating my social media profiles. It’s amazing how much websites and social media can be an extension of the self.

You know that feeling… You have a picture you want to update. You worry about how many likes it’ll get, what it’ll say about you, whether it’s appropriate for your parents/employers, whether it’s too much or not enough… Then there’s the feeling when you’ve updated it. You wait a second. Refresh the page waiting for likes. Throughout the next couple of days, you have this dopamine drip of likes going that leads you to constantly go back and check for more likes. This, my friends, is a feeling and it deserves a word. What that word is I’m not yet sure. I know it needs to be a harsh word that represents being on the edge of your seat but also on an emotional high of likes and validation. Likiction (like addiction + validation)? Valilike (Validation through likes)? All of these sound like medicines. Sigh.